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Subject Area: Economics
Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

to washington - Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton, (Federal Edition), vol. 9 [1774]

Edition used:

The Works of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Henry Cabot Lodge (Federal Edition) (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904). In 12 vols. Vol. 9.

Part of: The Works of Alexander Hamilton, (Federal Edition), 12 vols.

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  • Morristown

Dear Sir:

I am extremely sorry your Excellency has been troubled with the affair to which the papers transmitted in your letter of this morning relate. Admitting the possibility of Doctor Gordon’s not being the author of what I must always call a calumny, and had he not been an irreconcilable enemy to plain dealing, the matter might have been brought to a very easy issue without the necessity of an appeal to you. My determination, however, on the contents of his letter will be a very summary one. I shall not follow him in his labored digressions, because the scope of some of them is to me unintelligible, and the rest do not merit an answer.

So far from being disposed to comply with the Doctor’s conditions to avoid an inquiry, I consider the proposal he makes as a finishing stroke to that display of absurdity, littleness, and effrontery which characterizes the whole proceeding on his part, and I defy the utmost extent of his malignity and intrigue. I shall ever continue to hold him in the highest contempt,—to believe him to be the conniver of the charge against me till he gives up some other person as the author, and to represent him as such to all those with whom I have occasion to converse on the subject. I shall always speak of him in those terms which a sense of injury and a conviction of his worthlessness dictate.

I hope your Excellency will excuse the asperity of my expressions, which my respect for you would induce me to suppress, did I not owe it to my sensibility, wounded by the most barbarous attack upon my reputation and principles, to speak without reserve. I flatter myself you, sir, are too well acquainted with my way of thinking to entertain the least doubt of my innocence, and I beg leave to assure you that nothing will give me greater pleasure than to have the matter properly investigated.

I am only apprehensive that the Doctor will so manage it as that it will be found inexpedient to bring it to a public discussion, and that the knowledge of circumstances will be confined to a few, to be handed about as may best suit his purposes, to the prejudice of my character. Your Excellency, too, I trust, will see the propriety of that delicacy by which I am withheld from making any formal appeal to public authority in my own justification. ’t is the business of my accuser to bring me to justice, and, by anticipating him, I should not fail to incur the imputation of self-importance. I return your Excellency the papers from Doctor Gordon.1

[1]Now first printed from the Hamilton papers. It does not appear that Dr. Gordon ever brought the matter to the notice of the authorities of the State.